


a brief for the defense

by juliettes



Category: SKAM (France)
Genre: Drift Compatibility, Falling In Love, M/M, Pining, Soulmates, Strangers to Lovers, The Drift (Pacific Rim), practically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-13
Updated: 2019-06-13
Packaged: 2020-05-07 04:34:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19201987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juliettes/pseuds/juliettes
Summary: — kaiju blue is phosphorescent, and it stains, and it chokes, and it kills, and it's blue, blue, blue, and from head to toe eliott demaury's (ranger, eighteen, mark-three) suit is covered with it.





	a brief for the defense

**Author's Note:**

> for starters, it isn't entirely necessary to watch the movie to know what's going on. just know that there's monsters named kaiju that threaten the safety of the world, and basically people train to operate a jaeger so they can defeat said monsters. but in order to do so, they need to find someone 'drift compatible' to control it where they become two halves of a whole and, like, tell me that's not soulmates transcended hahaha.
> 
> title from jack gilbert. (thank you, indi, always. <3)
> 
>  
> 
> send me prompts [@unquaintly](https://unquaintly.tumblr.com/)!

— kaiju blue is phosphorescent, and it stains, and it chokes, and it kills, and it's blue, blue, blue, and from head to toe eliott demaury's _(ranger, eighteen, mark-three)_ suit is covered with it.

he knows what blue is. knows blue from the textbooks and the charts and blue from the sky, but this is kaiju blue — eliott demaury, now just half a ranger — a boy, really, coughs this out. loss is the color staining the asphalt. gloves, suits, and hands crowd around him, until he's out of sight, until all that's left is just white.

 

 

 

hong kong is a synthesis of languages and colors, and lucas has grown acquainted with the noise since he was sixteen, the shatterdome a second home that feels almost close enough to his first. but it isn't. steel and alloy fabricate its walls and ceiling, and outside, the buildings are opaque, glass reflecting viridian neons, the starless sky. it is a place lacking pretence, and there are scars marking the city that will never fade — a collectively held breath, tense, as if waiting for doom. or, more accurately, for the end.

miracle mile is concrete, humid, rainy — an everlasting gloom despite its contrived fluorescents.

now lucas is eighteen and living away from home has lost all its leftover charm. he shivers in his bunk, cold and alone, while yann paces the narrow length of their dorm, tucked away in the obscurer parts of the metallic metropolis. the blanket around his body is thin, and the shirt he wears is thin, too. "can't sleep?" asks yann, in french, noticing movement. "or am i just keeping you awake?"

he waits a bit, throat hurting, before he answers, "both."

it's a half-truth. insomnia has polluted his sleep schedule, because everything is looming, and because the prospect of piloting a jaeger is close, close now, closer than ever, and he's part of the few in his graduating class that have yet to find someone drift compatible, someone to know him inside out, someone to be with him until the very end.

yann sits on the bottom bunk across from him, mattress huffing. a boy a year older used to occupy that spot, but he dropped out and left without much of a goodbye, as most do when the allure of fame wears off and reality settles. "graduation is tomorrow." it's said resignedly. lucas stares up at the cracks running through the stark white ceiling. "i'm—" _afraid_.

blue is all he sees as he shuts his eyes — _kaiju blue_. even the brave know how to fear, because sometimes, sometimes, faith is not enough. "i know."

 

 

 

"i heard you were good, ranger."

 _ranger_. only three days ago he was a cadet. the french that comes out is kind to his ears, though the voice is unfamiliar, jarring to the english and cantonese he's often met with, so lucas startles from his spot on the ledge. in a mindless fit of rage he stomped out of training an hour before, mad at those who were drift compatible, mad at being excluded from partner combat, mad at how he was mad. now a void is all his feet meet, faced toward the complicated circuitry making up a jaeger in repair.

"jesus, fuck _off_ —" he snaps, turning to stand, almost losing his balance.

eliott demaury, ranger, superior, has his hands up when lucas finally meets his gaze. "sorry — i didn't mean to scare you." horror consumes him, but it thaws just a bit as eliott offers a thing of a grin, clothes plain without the esteem that decorated the uniform he once wore. they look large and overworn, holes in his shirt and his jeans, uncommonly simple. "also i guess i'll go fuck off now, then."

he stumbles over his words, muttering apologies that roll into one, cheeks coloring while eliott demaury looks on, pointedly amused, eyebrows raised. "— i didn't know it was you," lucas finishes, standing on shaky legs. he's a lot taller, taller than he expected from the holo pictures and the brief glimpse he saw of him last year (phosphorescent kaiju blue, hair matted red, dying), eyes a peculiar shade of blue, vastly different from the ultramarine staining some of the exposed parts of his skin. the boy — _man_ — across from him shrugs.

"would that have made a difference?"

lucas clears his throat, evasive, suddenly uncomfortable. "i should probably be going back, sir."

"it's weird," eliott sighs, as he's about to leave, "the _sir_ thing. it's just eliott."

it is a fact that he's not _just_ eliott. he'll never be, lucas thinks with bitter envy. _golden boy_ , graduated top of the ranks at sixteen, piloted a jaeger two months before his seventeenth, lost his co-pilot five months after his eighteenth. (he hasn't piloted since then, reports have said.) though his clothes are plain, there's nothing plain about him. his face isn't plain, either, features all angles and edges, good-looking in a way that's just fact, in a way that makes his heartbeat increase.

"i'm—"

"— lucas, i know." a smile adorns the sentence. lucas averts his eyes to the j-tech standing metres behind eliott for some reason. alarms beep for several moments, vapor hissing, the cacophony of sounds making up the orchestra of the shatterdome, and even then it turns slightly awkward between them, maybe. he scratches at his neck. "you should get back. i'll see you around, ranger."

and then eliott walks the other way, plain clothes and unplain looks, and lucas is left to stare at the mocking machinery spread across his vision.

 

 

 

in the odd hours of the day, lucas practices partnerless, when the shatterdome no longer seethes but instead hums, stirring, personnel asleep. yann no longer chooses to sleep in their dorm. all alone, he spars with dummies, all of them dormant, all without color or response, all while yearning for a chance to join the chaos of an apocalypse they can stop, albeit briefly, languages and orders thrown about, jaegers dispatched, loccent yelling broken commands.

the combat room, devoid of people, is an eerie place, curiously silent aside from the sound of yawning metal, absent of an electronic buzz permeating everywhere beyond it. "you're doing it all wrong, ranger," points out a voice from a dark corner. he stops swinging the shinai, eyes narrowed, lips pressed into a thin line. "they let you graduate without knowing how to fight properly?"

eliott is leant against a wall in the shadows of the half-dim. he opens his mouth in outrage, but the smile on eliott's face stops him halfway. lucas bristles. "i finished top of the cohort, actually." 

"oh, yeah?" toeing off his shoes, eliott joins him on the mat, circling him. his hair is several shades of autumn, messy, standing this close. a flicker of pain flits over his eyes at the stick in his hand before it's blinked away, and lucas notices the purple under them — a purple unlike the virulent shades of the breach. it takes a while before lucas registers that he has stopped. then eliott moves a step back. "you don't have a partner?"

"no," lucas mutters with a grim sigh, "they've all been incompatible."

a pause. "you want this bad, don't you?" there's something fierce in how he looks at him, juxtaposed to the pretty way syllables are formed around his mouth, and lucas _stares_ , enthralled by all the strange blue hues eliott's made of, from his irises to the stains and scars, oddly enough. lucas is flustered, rattled. 

"i think we all want this badly, don't you?" he says. "it's the end of the world."

silence hangs around them for a while, then eliott's eyes deviate from his face. "maybe," he shrugs. loss is blatant, and for a moment lucas wonders if he'll ever recover enough to pilot again. "come on, then— you going to show me what you got?"

so he does, wood against plastic, and eliott demaury, former pilot, with his voice in flat monotones, counts all his mistakes, lungs in pain, body complaining as he strikes again, and again, and again, until distantly, miracle mile drips with the soft colors of a new morning, monsters lay waiting underneath their feet.

 

 

 

category two — _onibaba_ — exits the breach five weeks later at three twenty-four a.m., when lucas' mistakes have diminished to a few in the confines of the combat room. the shatterdome awakens with a vehement start as the clock strikes three twenty-five a.m. loccent officers, already in uniform, speak in the language of disorder as jaegers are yanked from their plugs and rangers are deployed and the metropolis explodes into a dozen shades of neon as if it never laid in false quiescence. eliott is gone in seconds and lucas follows him up to the bridge, further then, further than the k-science lab, further, until they reach the control room.

in bated sparks eliott's face is illuminated crimson.

and it's absurdly beautiful.

 _still alive_ —

 _plasmacaster_ — _three miles to your left._

_holding strong, bakhellals._

and then finally, finally—

— _kaiju signature falling_ , _folks._

everybody cheers, as if the apocalypse has ended, though small victories are still victories and lucas allows himself to get swept up into it, swallowing down the stormy longing as he sees the light on the holo screen disappear, category two subdued, dead, kaiju blue vaporizing as it gets sprayed down by technicians, scientists holding samples in tubes, wondering when he'll be the one in a suit — who he'll be with. applause echoes all around them. eliott looks relieved. if he looked hard enough, maybe he would see the feeling inside his chest swallowed by the dark of his pupils, or maybe he wouldn't. imane and her brother emerge from the conn-pod, soaked in sweat, victorious, personnel bleary but awake.

there's heaviness in his steps as eliott walks away. he doesn't know why he follows, but he does anyway, and all of a sudden his muscles complain, abruptly aware that they ache, and lucas follows him down, down, down labyrinthine walkways, until they sit on a bridge overlooking the small led brights of victoria harbor, legs dangling over an abyss. they sit close, and lucas ignores the heat of eliott's arm through all those layers of clothing. he looks sideways briefly; lucas keeps his eyes trained on the sleepless city in slumber.

"pretty, right?" rain falls over the port in glistening grays. he doesn't know how to reply, turning his head instead to watch as eliott traces the outline of skyscrapers through the air with his finger. "the lights, the harbor, the colors," he carries on, voice just barely melancholic, "i'd miss it if it were gone."

"eliott—"

"but i think i miss home more right now."

all of a sudden eliott looks far too young, sorrow stripping him of the youth he once wore, and now he looks twenty, _just_ twenty, and lucas doesn't know how to feel or what to say. lucas opens his mouth and closes it. then opens it again. "i'd miss you." it comes out a croak, coded with skittish syllables and cautious consonants, flimsy, the words strangely small. eliott blinks. "i don't — i mean— the corps would miss you — they all would," he coughs, chest burning. "your friends would, too. and so would i."

for once eliott seems to be at a loss for words, chuckling, and maybe his cheeks are stained red. _anteverse red._ or maybe it's just the strobe. "i don't think i'll be leaving anytime soon," eliott says after a while, nudging him. "well, as long as you're here."

lucas bites on his lip to stifle a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "then i guess you'll have to stay until the end of the apocalypse."

"until the end of the apocalypse, then."

 

 

 

("lucas—"

"about last year," lucas stops, to watch for any shift in eliott's expression. "i saw what happened."

"yes, i know."

"did it—?" _hurt_.

“more than i thought i could handle.”)

 

 

 

when sleep conquers him, he dreams of eliott, body covered in phosphorescent kaiju blue, whites of his eyes in the brightest ultramarine.

 

 

 

time burns on a nocturnal schedule when the vessels of hong kong's beating heart narrows into empty threads. eliott meets him in the corridor before the combat room, caramel bomber over his shoulders, smiling lazily. a small smile curls lucas’ lips up. lucas is aware he's exacerbating the insomnia, but nighttime is an odd time, a time where feelings lurk, uninvited, in the corners of his chest like they do in the corners of this room. it's the sleepiness, possibly, the nights spent half-awake and the days spent half-asleep, perhaps, that being near eliott makes the air go thin around him, like oxygen can't get to him fast enough.

he's unnecessarily gentle. lucas makes careless mistakes, growing frustrated, distracted, because eliott stands close, so close, _too close_ , close enough for him to smell the cedar on his clothes, and lucas loses focus. swords are struck wrong, shinai dropped, breaths stolen. if eliott noticed, he doesn't comment. he wouldn't be able to explain himself — this _crush_ , he reckons, because he doesn't know what it is, either.

"what's wrong?" asks eliott one night after one too many faults, prying the sword from him. lucas is careful to avoid his fingers.

"nothing."

eliott's stares and lucas stares back, bottom lip between his teeth, burning him with a soft touch on his wrist. somewhere, the echo of a blast reverbs. trimmed nails run over the ridges of the wood. he inhales, slowly, lucas almost sighs. "okay—," eliott steps back, "you don't have to tell me if you don't want to.”

a shrug. "it's not— i don't know," is what he says, voice low. he does, he doesn't, he does. eliott looks at him with concern, searching his face a certain way, and somehow it makes lucas blush. silence gets anxious, to the point he has to stand some metres away. "are we done for tonight?"

"are we?"

"if you say we are, then, yeah."

lucas swallows, heat spreading inside his lungs. he lets out a weak laugh while he slots the sword back into place, fiddling with the handle absentmindedly. turned away, lucas can hear how eliott takes a step toward him, sound blunt as he does so. another step, and he feels his heart falter. another, and another, and another. another step — spun around until steps are no more.

his face is bathed in muted ambers.

"— and if i say we aren't?" the question come out convoluted, and they watch each other.

"then i don't know what else to say, sir."

the hands on his hips release him, but the feelings he has for eliott hold him tighter still, everything thin as paper. he licks his lips. eliott follows the movement, eyes dark and unreadable, soul in shreds, touching his elbow lightly, so lightly, heart against chest. fingers trail down to clasp around his knuckles. pressing, as if the bones under his skin are important. it chokes the breath on his throat.

“can i—? eliott asks, tone of voice tentative, and soft, and caring, the voice of a ranger, a hero, but a boy nonetheless.

“yes.” lucas doesn’t nod, so eliott can’t move. “yes, _eliott_ —”

and the first kiss is colored timid, on the corner of his mouth. then on his mouth, soft, tepid, even. thumb on lucas’ chin, hands clasped the slightest around edges of his shirt. eliott walks him forward, following until he's stumbling back against the wall, fingers growing desperate as they tug, and pull, and press, and lucas kisses him harder, and it tastes like longing and hope and the apocalypse all at once. chemistry and drift compatibility. strangely yearning sighs, small gasps, alchemy that’s undeniable.

eventually one of them pulls away, when oxygen becomes scarce. his lips tingle, raising a hand to touch it.

"ah," eliott breathes. lucas likes eliott's hair finger tousled, gaze blank as if in a daze. he shifts on his weight, unsure on what to do. 

but shame washes over him not even a minute later, at the silence, maybe, at the regret hanging in the air. it turns everything around him cold and stuffy. eliott's lips are swollen red, like the blush on his cheeks, like the alarm of a kaiju at large. his are, too, most likely. lucas shuts his eyes for a brief moment.

 _fuck_.

"i should go."

there's no reply. he averts his gaze to his shoes on the other side of the room, hurrying away, slipping them on hastily, never looking back as he leaves through the whining door and runs and runs and runs, finger on mouth, feeling how it burns as he falls into a rift he’ll never be able to climb out of, and he’s burning alive.

 

 

 

(lucas wakes up to knocking at his door. _wakes_ is an incorrect verb for what it is, though, because he never slept, no, not really. for hours he tossed and turned, blankets clung onto his legs, restless, wanting, sleeping in fits and awaking to a pain in his arms like the pain in his chest and a knowledge there's someone drift compatible, someone he dreams of, someone halfway there to knowing him entirely. lucas trips out of bed and the air is frigid. he pulls open the door and the air gets colder. “ _hey_ —” “it’s four.” “sorry, i couldn’t sleep.” not apologetic. “— why’d you come, eliott?” “because,” eliott shrugs, in that haggard way he never does, “you were all i could think about.” it throws him off for a bit, arms crossed over his chest, at the bluntness. lucas huffs a dry laugh. "okay." "let me in?" there's no demand in his voice, just a plea, maybe, and lucas sighs, opening the door the slightest, and eliott's holding his face and pressing his lips against his forehead. he steps back, eyes seeing, lucas looking right back.)

 

 

 

they lay on the bottom bunk, sheets ice-cold, legs entangled and souls, too, probably. as hong kong stirs they fall into slumber. machinery beginning to purr, stuttering sometimes, and eliott strokes his head, hair black and oily-looking under the single incandescent, kissing him every other minute.

violet shades their faces, streaming in through the cracks his blinds can't reach. lucas is tracing the scars on eliott's arm, nails on skin, contrasting hues. steam comes out when they breathe. words hang but never leave. from beside him, eliott stares, eyes too clear even in darkness, and they stare through his ribs into his heart. he scrunches his nose, squirming a bit under the attention. "what?" lucas asks, voice raspy, _tired_.

"you're beautiful," eliott replies, brushing away strands of hair. he shivers.

"not that, eliott."

it's quiet for a bit, painfully quiet. the mattress sighs, eliott shifts, and the kiss they share is slow, not sharp or hasty like hours before. lucas has never been so deeply fascinated by someone, affection spilling over the edges of his bones, dripping onto the sheets, staining them red, red, red, and this time there's no mistake. his thumb brushes over his cheek, touch soft, aching, gentle. "i'm sorry," eliott whispers into the silence, weary, sullen. lucas hears _i'm scared_ , the eliott beside him now boy eliott, the eliott who lost his sister at eighteen to an endless sort of end.

lucas raises a hand, fingers fluttering nervously, tracing the lines of his features. "you don't have to be."

"but i am, though, lucas." there's sadness in him as his eyes are squeezed shut.

winding arms around his neck, lucas holds him there while eliott's arms go around his waist, and they stay like that, hugging tight, never getting close enough, and mutters, "until the end of the apocalypse."

a wistful chuckle spills out.

" _until the end of the apocalypse_."

 

 

 

eliott demaury comes alive when he fights. he's sweaty and good-looking, and lucas is bewildered at how closely they're matched, neither of them bending or willing to lose, but he's pleased, too, knowing that they are. lucas knows his move before he strikes. eliott knows where he'll be before lucas even knows himself.

but it's distracting, yes, frustration and pretty looks making for a poor combination, and eliott looks at him like he's entirely enthralled (or in love)(or like he wants to win), and lucas has more experience dealing with it, so it's inexorable that eliott is pinned to the ground, shinai rolling away from him, laughing. hair a mess, lucas watches him hovered above. a wide smile curls his lips up. _it's love_ , he thinks, recklessly, and it's scary, heart full of westerlies like water away from the harbor.

"you ready?" his voice is muffled by the running tap. winter has bloomed into a muggy spring, rain coming down hard as ever on the shatterdome. eliott stands at the doorway, arms crossed, observing him in silence. lucas turns it off. he crosses over to him, and he clings to the sides of eliott's shirt, lured close, hands pressing and pressing and pressing, their fingers searching for each other. in the reflection they appear as just two boys, lost of a youth they never claimed. two boys, unfamiliar with a love like theirs.

foreheads touching, eliott exhales, grinning. "whenever i'm with you, yeah. always."

“i'll be waiting in the drift for you," lucas smiles. then as he gets pushed into the mattress, eliott falling on his knees, echoes: " _always_."

 

 

 

category three — _knifehead_ — exits the breach three hours later and they're ushered through intricate staircases too many floors up. they're suited up, eliott and lucas, boy and boy, ranger and ranger, pilot and pilot. the suit makes his movements too stiff, earpiece crackling to life. inside the helmet, eliott looks like how he did on miracle mile. boyish, proud, washed muddy blue. if lucas blinks, he'd see him choking on a substance too unnatural, writhing in pain. with a shove they're positioned in the conn-pod amidst the _allegro_ of doomsday.

"you ready?" eliott's smile is almost grim.

fear floods lucas' insides for a moment, holding his breath as they're dropped several floors below, and maybe he isn't ready to die. lucas twists his head to look at eliott. _i'll follow you into the end_ , he thinks, foolishly, and the feelings it brings are too complicated to name.

"only when you are."

arthur chuckles into the mic.

 _ready lover boys? engaging in neural handshake in five_ —

 _four_ —

eliott looks at him. _until the end._

 _three_ —

 _two_ —

 _one_ —

all the hues in his body dissipate into brilliant sapphires. and it's _breathtaking_.

they enter the drift and there's pain, so much pain, losslossloss, hurt physical, applause, and lucas is thirteen, kissing a faceless girl and eliott cuts his knee, arms around him, girl just like him, love, loss replacing it just as fast. lucas sees paris crumble, a kaiju screams,  _i'mluca s,_ hong kong halogens, torn from his pod, graduation, salt water down his throat, coughing and coughing and coughing. cerulean shifts— lucas and eliott, no pain, a little pain, an ache, longing and yearning and hoping, _i'dmissyou_. lucasandeliott, love, fear, love, so much love, neon, arm over his shoulder, onhis k n ee s, s tirring a s they wake, tucked into each other.

_right hemispheres calibrating, left hemisphere calibrating._

an ocean meets them, kaiju wailing. they fight, and it's a vision into the very apocalypse, lucas and eliott, phosphorescent kaiju blue. an intimate ballet to a concerto of sickening violence. it's lucasandeliott, there's no mistake, and his heart stops together. the monster falls. azure soars into the heavy gray, diamond blue, and it's the color of death, and loss, and, perhaps, as they look up — _hope_.

 

 

 

 

go back, and—

kaiju blue is phosphorescent, and it stains, and it chokes, and it kills, and it's blue, blue, blue, and from head to toe his suit is covered with it, and his skin is, too.

he knows what blue is. knows blue from death and the charts and blue from what was once the sky, but this is kaiju blue — eliott demaury, now just half a ranger — a boy, really, coughs this out. loss is the color staining the asphalt, grief so heavy he can't cry or scream or shout, and it suffocates him inside out until all that he breathes on is phosphorous. idriss shouts but eliott can't hear. a boy stands in front of the gates to the shatterdome, too far to see properly, squinting against the skyscrapers reflecting the sun and all its mockery. a boy, staring, wide-eyed but far from innocent, features sharp, and he's seraphic amidst the crude ultraviolence. he looks toward sofiane, eyes not seeing.

eliott blinks, and he's gone.

blinks, until all that's left is white.

blinks, and somewhere beneath the brittle layers of his ribcage, beneath the loss, so much loss, he _knows_.

**Author's Note:**

> it's011011000110111101110110011001010010110000100000011011000110111101110110011001010010110000100000011011000110111101110110011001010010110000100000011101010110111001110100011010010110110000100000011101000110100001100101001000000110010101101110011001000010000001101111011001100010000001110100011010000110010100100000011000010111000001101111011000110110000101101100011110010111000001110011011001010010110000100000011101010110111001110100011010010110110000100000011101000110100001100101001000000110010101101110011001000010110000100000 _until _—__


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